Opponents of a temporary Bolinas R.V. park have asked a Marin County Superior Court judge to overturn the project, which is providing emergency shelter to nearly 60 Latino residents who previously lived in substandard housing at a ranch next door.
The project has received strong support from state and county officials and many Bolinas residents, but a group called Bolinas for Compassionate Land Use filed a petition on Oct. 14 asking the court to rescind the project’s permit.
The group argues that the park, known as Bo-Linda Vista, encroaches on wetlands and violates the 1965 Williamson Act, which protects farm and ranch land from development.
Supporters of the project, which is managed by the Bolinas Community Land Trust, view it as an innovative plan to provide dignified, affordable housing to families who form the backbone of the community.
The trailers are located on property owned by the land trust, which purchased the 20-acre portion of the Tacherra ranch in 2018. The nonprofit has also signed a purchase-and-sale agreement for a 46-acre parcel next door, where it plans to remove 27 substandard structures and replace them with permanent farmworker housing within five years.
Bolinas for Compassionate Land Use has tried unsuccessfully to rescind the project at every turn. The group appealed to the Planning Commission, the Board of Supervisors and then the California Coastal Commission, which upheld the project last month. Its final option was to sue.
Marin County has allocated more than half a million dollars to the plan, and the project was awarded an $8.67 million grant from the state last year.
In their last-ditch effort to block the R.V. park, opponents have argued that the county violated the California Environmental Quality Act and its own coastal development rules by failing to require a complete environmental review before approving the project.
The lawsuit describes the project as “environmentally reckless” because the trailers are located less than 50 feet from wetlands, in violation of Marin’s local coastal program. The petition does not seek removal of the trailers but calls on the defendants to mitigate any environmental damage the project might cause.
The previously disturbed wetland in question was once the site of a livestock pen. State and county staff concluded that any potential environmental damage would be minimal.
The suit also argues that under county zoning rules, any housing located on the property must be exclusively for farmworkers. “It is clear that only two or three agricultural workers out of however many households are actually residing in the trailers,” the petition states.
Annie O’Connor, executive director of the land trust, declined to comment on the suit this week. She has previously stated that workers from several farms and ranches live at Bo-Linda Vista but that determining a precise number is difficult because few make a living doing agricultural work alone.
Len Rifkind, the attorney for the land trust, said he is confident the court will uphold the permit. “I’m not sure that there is a legal definition of a farmworker per se,” he told the Light. “But there’s no question that the people who were living on the Tacherra ranch in squalor are the same people who are now living in clean trailers with a septic and sanitary system in place. They moved 100 feet from shacks and decrepit housing to clean, sanitary conditions.”
He noted that three state and county agencies approved the project. “I think it’s unlikely that the courts can overturn those administrative decisions,” he said.
Brian Washington, the Marin County counsel, said it could take six months to a year before a judge responds. “We think approving the temporary R.V. camp was the right thing to do and that it fit well in our code,” he said, declining to comment further until he has more time to review the suit.
One year before granting Bo-Linda Vista’s coastal development permit, the county granted the project an expedited emergency permit. It acted after red tagging more than 20 unpermitted trailers, mobile homes and detached accessory structures that were being used for housing without approved septic systems or access to drinking water.
In July 2022, code inspectors found that residents were sourcing water from garden hoses, and they found sewage surfacing onto the ground at four locations. Several of the dwellings lacked heating and proper electrical connections and had broken windows and leaky roofs.
The lawsuit documents the long history of legal proceedings at the ranch, which was placed into a receivership in 2006 after disputes arose among members of the Tacherra family. The county first cited the ranch, then the site of an unpermitted dump, for code violations in 1993. The petition suggests that, given the history of violations and unsanitary conditions, the “emergency” finally addressed by the R.V. park wasn’t actually an emergency at all.
But, Mr. Rifkind said, “Try telling that to the people who were living at the Tacherra ranch, who didn’t have sanitary systems, who had raw sewage on the ground and porta-potties that were overflowing or not being serviced as often as they should be. Try telling them that there wasn’t an emergency.”
In an interview with the Light, Ed Yates, the attorney for Bolinas for Compassionate Land Use, criticized the land trust for not finding alternative housing for the ranch residents long ago—at a location elsewhere in town. “They never made any effort to do so,” he said. “The only thing they ever made an effort to do was put them out in what appears to be some kind of ghetto. They shut them all out away from the town, away from where all the Caucasian people live.”